Visible Essence

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When mama returned, she couldn’t talk to him because of the mood he was in killing the mosquitoes.

Just as she stood contemplating on how to tell him about our school fees, he got up from the resting chair on which he sat on and headed to their bed room.

The next day when mama told him about it, he shouted at her that he has no money, having spent all his money buying stuffs for Christmas and that he haven’t been paid his salary for the month. It wasn’t up to two weeks and we were sent out of school for not paying our school fees.

The next few weeks, we spent it at home. Mama couldn’t take it any longer. And haven’t decided on what to do with the money uncle gave her during Xmas to start up something.

It was a big money and she wouldn’t want to make any wrong move or risk papa finding out. She had saved little money on her own during this past few months and especially during Xmas.
So she used it to start pure water business. She would buy eleven bags of pure water for five hundred naira from distributors and sell them at one hundred naira per bag. She would refrigerate some and sell them at ten naira per sachet. When there isn’t light, she would put them in a cooler and use ice block to make them cold.

She told everyone in the compound of her new business. And it really went well making little profits from every bag she sold and more when she sells them cold.

Even at all these, she couldn’t make up our school fees on time and exams were approaching. So we offered to carry some of the pure water around to sell. She objected at first but when she saw she had no other choice, she had to agree. But gave up specific area’s to go to and time to get home whether we finished selling or not.

Selling wasn’t  as easy as we taught, going up and down selling things to people, getting numerous insults from buyer, when you try to ask them to buy from you. I had seen children hawking in tattered, dirty clothes, some without clothes, others looking sick, but I never imagined we could be in that condition.

one would never know how painful someone’s shoe is, until you try it. And having to run up and down in traffic to be able to sell and get more goods, which was tiring. Things happened like magic because in less than one week we sold up to one hundred bags of water and could raise enough money for our school fees.

During these periods, my friend uju would come around after school to teach me what was taught in school every day and give me the assignments, and then would collect it to submit for me in school.

I didn’t really miss much in school. Same was applied to Ada but Obinna wasn’t that lucky because all boys do is play football.

So soon, we went back to school without papa knowing. It was barely one week before exam that papa brought our school fees and gave to mama to pay.

Mama put it in her pure water business and continued to make little money on her own without papa’s knowledge; and preparing herself for the bigger picture.
                                                                                                                                           It has being eight months since mama started her pure water business, making a reasonable profit from it and had succeeded in keeping it hidden from papa.

She had started looking for a shop to start up a little chemist in the neighborhood. To practice what she spent four years studying in the university, with all the nursing practices involved.

Mama went around buying things during the day time when papa must have left for work, putting the chemist in other; painting, putting up furniture and counter, clinic signs, sewing some needed clothes, and mattresses etc. she put most of them in the shop and take some home.

That very day she had told papa she would be going for our parents and teachers association meeting on her way back from the market, just to buy enough time for herself. She had finished on time that day and had decided to go home and repair dinner.

It was around 3.15pm when she got home. Having turned the key in the lock, she braced the front door with her back and shoved the bag she was carrying through it as a wedge before it could slam itself shut again as usual.